Generally, it is known that hinged belt fasteners having preset or prestaked staples require that two distinct staple setting operations take place to provide the required low profile for the staples of the fasteners when installed on the end of a conveyor belt. The first operation initially sets the legs by driving the staples through the apertures of the upper leg or plate member in which they are held, through the belt, through aligned apertures in the lower leg or plate member of the fasteners, and then against an anvil surface that starts to bend the staple legs for eventually being oriented substantially parallel to the lower leg or plate member of the fastener when finally set. The final setting operation involves applying a drive force to the staple to drive the bent, initially set staple legs against an anvil so they are further bent to be received in a pocket in the lower fastener member so as not to project out of the pocket. For these different staple setting operations, different anvil configurations need to be employed.
In one known example, Applicant's assignee herein has a series of Ready Set™ (RS) staple belt fasteners having upper and lower plate members interconnected by a pair of arcuate hinge loops. The upper plate has the legs of a pair of staples held in apertures in respective pockets of the upper plate with aligned apertures in respective lower pockets of the lower plate. These fasteners are shown in Applicants' assignee's U.S. Pat. No. 5,638,582, the disclosure of which is incorporated as if reproduced in its entirety herein. Bridge portions between lower plate members of adjacent RS fasteners connect the fasteners in a strip.
The RS belt fasteners are applied to belt ends via the use of two separate tools each having anvils that are specially configured for the operation they perform. The first tool has anvils fixed to a base channel that are configured to provide an initial set for the staple legs while the other tool has anvils fixed to another base channel that are configured to provide the staple legs with their final set. Both tools use comb members for aligning the staple legs with the anvils. This is of particular importance with respect to the initial set tool where the anvils have wells that are specially configured to direct the legs toward each other in an offset manner so that they can pass adjacent to each other when finally set. The tools also have guide blocks with over-center clamps that are operable to cause the lower plates of the fasteners to be pushed against the anvils. The guide blocks have through openings configured to receive a nose of a power drive tool, such as a pneumatic driver, that has a drive punch for engaging the crown or head of the staples aligned with the guide block openings, such as described in Applicant's assignee's U.S. Pat. No. 7,568,269, the disclosure of which is incorporated as if reproduced in its entirety herein.
After all of the staple legs on each of the fasteners in a strip are initially set, the clamps are released and the belt end is pulled out of the initial set tool and put into a similar final set tool, albeit with different anvil plates. These anvil plates generally have a flat anvil surface against which the bent, initially set staple legs are driven to seat these in the pockets of the lower plate in a cross-wise fashion to generate a high quality final set of the staple legs so that they do not project out of the lower plate pockets. Alternatively, it is known that, rather than take the time to load the belt with the initially set staples into another tool, installers may simply flip the belt over and, using a hammer, deliver hammer blows to the initially set staple legs to drive them into the pockets of the lower plates.
Applicant's assignee provides another tool for applying a different hinged belt fastener that has preset staples. In the F-series fasteners, the staples are held in apertures formed in a pocket of an upper leg of the fastener which are driven through the belt and into apertures formed in a pocket of the lower leg of the fastener. However, the applicator tool is operable to perform both the initial set and the final set of the staple legs without requiring that the conveyor belt be unclamped from an initial set tool for being inserted into a different tool for the final set operation.
In the F-series applicator tool, there is a floor mounted frame that supports an elevated, inclined bed that is elongated and which has through openings or slots therein. The strip of F-series fasteners interconnected by a wire welded to the fasteners is turned upside down so that the heads of the staples are first fit into the slots in the bed followed by the legs. The belt is then inserted between the fastener legs into engagement with the belt stops of the fasteners with the belt then being clamped adjacent to the bed so that the bed extends along its length laterally across the width of belt. An indexing head is mounted to the bed and is indexed therealong for being aligned relative to the fasteners for the driving operations of the staple legs to set them into the pockets of the fastener legs.
For this purpose, the head carries both a final set anvil sized to finally set legs for staples of a pair of adjacent fasteners and an adjacent, initial set anvil sized for initial setting of the legs of staples of a pair of adjacent fasteners with the initial set anvil having oblique channels for receiving and bending the legs therein. The anvils are mounted to an upper portion of the head, and staple punches are carried by a lower portion of the head. The upper and lower portions are connected to each other and are movable by manual operation of a staple setting lever along with the respective anvils and punches.
The head includes an indexing mechanism having an indexing arm that fits into the slot openings of the bed for precisely aligning the initial set anvil and final set anvil with the staple legs. An advance lever separate from the setting lever is connected to the indexing mechanism for being operated to index the head down the length of the bed. After indexing the head, a single operation of the manual setting lever causes both the initial set and final set anvils to shift down towards the bed and causes the punches to shift upwardly in a sequential manner through the openings so that adjacent pairs of staples are sequentially driven for an initial set of one pair of the staples and then a final set of the adjacent pair of staples. After the setting operation, the head is advanced by a pair of openings via operation of the advance lever with the initial set anvil leading followed by the trailing, final set anvil so that the final set anvil is now aligned with the staple legs that were previously initially set and the initial set anvil is aligned with staples in bed openings that have not yet been driven through the belt for initial setting.
As is apparent, the F-series applicator tool requires that the head be precisely indexed for aligning the anvils, and particularly so with the initial set anvil, so that the legs properly fit into the oblique channels for being initially set. Also, because the tool head comingles the initial set and final set staple driving operations for adjacent fasteners which both occur by a single manual pull of the setting lever, it is required that the head be sequentially advanced from one end of the bed to the other without skipping over fasteners so that only initially set staples are driven against the final set anvil. In other words, the head cannot be advanced to various locations along the belt end such as can be done with the applicator tools for the RS fasteners where there is a separate pneumatic power tool utilized to drive the staples and the initial and final set anvils are in separate tools.